Overview: Bluesky and the ATmosphere
The ATmosphere is the information ecosystem based on ATproto, the protocol developed by and for Bluesky. More interconnected apps are emerging. The potential for better online conversations is profound... if adequate revenue streams can be confirmed.
(last edit: February 2025)
Just as Mastodon is on the Fediverse, an information ecosystem where it and other apps can interact using the ActivityPub protocol, the Bluesky protocol (ATproto) underpins the ATmosphere ecosystem. In 2025, I'm betting that this is the most promising ground for #AI4communities.
Origins: Bluesky
ATproto was originally going to underpin Twitter before Elon Musk bought it. Moreover, when the Bluesky team then spun off from Twitter, they decided to keep many things unchanged, making the transition easier for people fleeing X.
The result looked and felt so similar that many people didn't spot how the open, permissionless nature of this new environment set Bluesky apart. Some key Bluesky features include:
- Custom feeds, each a subset of the Bluesky firehose, tuned to a particular community's interests and moderation preferences, created by anyone using a variety of 3rd party tools (see Bluesky custom feeds) and usable by anyone by simply pinning the feed to their interface
- Labellers apply labels to accounts - like custom feeds, anyone can create one, using a variety of tools, and anyone can subscribe to them if they want to see the label
- Block/mute lists are a sort of labeller: subscribe to one and you'll never see content from anyone on the list in your timeline
- Starter packs package a list of up to 150 people and (optionally) custom feeds relevant to a particular topic, and provide a feed of the people's posts.
- 3rd party apps: you don't need to use the official Bluesky app - there are many others, and because the ATmosphere is permissionless they won't go the way of Tweetdeck.
Enter the ATmosphere
The ATmophere is a permissionless ecosystem - anyone can build anything they like, and can access the Bluesky feed, without having to get Bluesky Social PBC's permission.
So, like Mastodon, Bluesky is not the only kid on its protocol block: in mid-2024 the Whitewind blogging platform launched, and within a few months a plethora of other apps were in beta, including Instagram- & TikTok lookalikes (all tools tagged #atproto and #tool).
Is it decentralised?
Yes, but not as decentralised as Fediverse. The key arguments in this once-fractious debate were both articulated and calmed by two protocol engineers: Christine Lemmer-Webber (ActivityPub co-author) and Bryan Newbold of Bluesky, who exchanged three enormous blog posts. After reading, annotating and generally struggling through all three (and more), I came out with a few conclusions (paraphrased from my newsletter from December 2024 and January 2025):
- There are different degrees of decentralisation, and different ways to get there. A comparison between the relatively mature Fediverse and Bluesky, with its brand-new protocol, is therefore tricky, particularly as Bluesky is focusing first and foremost on providing an X-like experience as possible for everyone fleeing X, which required certain choices to be made.
- There are too many blog posts, not enough wikis - someone should lock these two in a room somewhere until they come up with a text they both agree on
- I hope this protocol competition will evolve until the two spaces complement each other, as:
- ATProto's shared-heap model structurally favours few servers, "and thus has a natural centralizing force"
- ActivityPub has an incentive to keep the average followers/user low.
- the Fediverse will therefore probably remain a good place for cozyweb spaces, and co-exist with more global conversations on the more centralised and business-like ATmosphere.
- The world needs both.
What does the ATmosphere represent?
I first saw this when I published my December newsletter, and an extract from it as a stand-alone post, on Whitewind (see everything I Do or Think tagged #Whitewind).
When you sign up to blog on Whitewind, you use your Bluesky ID, and your blog posts live in your Bluesky Personal Data Store. So it's your content, and if Whitewind disappears, you can take it with you to another provider (or build your own), and all of your links keep working. Whitewind doesn't own you. You own you.
Moreover, there's "seamless comments integration with BlueSky: a comment posted to the blog is shared on the commenter's Bluesky account, and whenever someone shares the post on Bluesky it also appears under the post" - Thinking transparently in the ATmosphere.
The code for that integration is freely available, so this has massive implications for website-based communities, among other things.
One of those other things is #ai4communities, which was originally more Fediverse-oriented when I first started articulating it in January 2023. In 2024 I began revisiting it on my experimental wiki with a "technology-agnostic" post accompanied by sub-pages exploring how it would look on the Fediverse, the ATmosphere and (tbd) Nostr. The exercise convinced me that the ATmosphere is most promising, which is why it's been the focus of recent newsletters.
Relevant resources
beta.protopro.blue
Another ATproto app in the linkedin space, "ProtoPro is the future of businesses and professionals connecting online. With AT Protocol, your identity, graph, and content are portable, secure, and under your control."
techcrunch.com
"log in to your existing accounts on the supported networks. Afterward, you’ll instantly be following all your friends in a combined timeline. The app also features a combined trending section and cross-posting support.... will later introduce a subscription plan to generate revenue."
teal.fm
"Track your music listening across all platforms...The most beautiful way to scrobble and analyze your music history...take control of your sound, connect with your audience, and share your tastes with the world. Connect with music lovers who share your taste and discover new tracks through community recommendations. Seamlessly sync your listening…
atwork.place
"at://work is a modern job board that leverages decentralized identity and social networking. We believe in empowering professionals to own their digital identity while connecting with meaningful career opportunities... ensures that your professional profile and job postings remain under your control. "
monomarks.at
"Monomarks is an open social bookmarking platform built on the AT Protocol. You can save, organise, and share links to interesting stuff while maintaining full ownership of your data... in the general mould of Pinboard, Delicious"
devlog.pckt.blog
Another ATproto longform app, "an entire blogging platform that fits in your pocket... a place to jot down and share your ideas, opinions, hobbies, and anything else you’d like to share with the world, quickly and easily.
pipup.social
Yet another longform ATproto writing app, "built for creators in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), art, and business... designed to help you stay focused on the work itself... Our editor uses Markdown plus extensions designed for writers in specialized fields."Includes maths, code, visualisations (maths plots, mermaid), ar…
offprint.app
Another longform ATproto app: "Writers deserve to own their work, their audience, and their future... offprint gives you real monetization built on AT Protocol, you truly own your audience and content. Built for novelists serializing their work, journalists starting newsletters, engineers sharing their journey, and publications breaking free from …
arxiv.org
"Middleware, third-party software intermediaries between users and platforms, has been broached as a means to decentralize the power of social media platforms and enhance user agency... widespread adoption of open middleware has long hinged on the cooperation of established major platforms; however... Mastodon and Bluesky, has led to increased off…
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social media,
curation,
moderation,
decentralised,
fediverse,
atprotocol,
renee diresta,
middleware
carnegieendowment.org
"the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace conducted a workshop with eighteen experts to explore governance challenges to defederation... on decentralized social media [which] offers new possibilities for online governance. Experts consider how it can be used responsibly, in a way that balances speech and safety".A good example of how the dis…
connectedplaces.leaflet.pub
There are a lot of reasons to use Substack: apart from doing "all the basic things of a newsletter writing platform well", it's free to get started and - crucially - helps you build an audience. But "Substack makes it hard to leave when you want to leave the platform", as they're pursuing a classic lock-in strategy. Any competitor must provide sim…
blog.blacksky.community
At last, a single page setting out the What and Why of Blacksky, which "builds infrastructure for social groups to control how they show up online: how their feeds work, how harm is addressed, and how costs are covered. Instead of one-size-fits-all rules set by a company with growth targets, Blacksky enables groups to govern themselves, and pool r…
www.graze.social
How Graze raised funding for NPR and PBS "while also learning more about the future of sponsored content on ATProto".Results: "The Graze.social NPR/PBS donation campaign's 168% ROAS is exceptional performance in the nonprofit digital advertising landscape. Industry benchmarks from M+R show that typical Facebook/Meta campaigns achieve only 48% retu…
connectedplaces.online
The always good Laurens on the ActivityPub-ATproto open letter: "There is a large group of people who are actively moving the space forward, and who have signed the open letter that calls for mutual respect and working together for a better open social web. The number of people who voiced objections and concerns is minimal, but by focusing on proc…
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social media,
activitypub,
sensemaking,
atprotocol,
blacksky,
open letter,
age verification,
laurens hof
lassehjorthmadsen.github.io
"We’ve built a network of scientists and researchers active on Bluesky. The goal is to better understand how this group of users interact on the platform... we arrived at a science-oriented network of 17,980", computed centrality measures to identify influential members, and created an interactive 3d visualisation.They also provide details of the …
leaflet.pub
"The first thing I noticed is how strange it felt to use... strange and empty, every interaction felt like it took an eternity... any interaction with others to require multiple levels of intentional actions".After acclimatising, however, "I began to feel comfortable ... very calming... [then] I ran out of stamina" - the site ceased 'working', so …
github.com
An open letter trying to calm troubled protocol waters: "the Social Web Community Group has seen an increase in heated discussions online ... a hotbed for conflict, disagreements, and misinformation. There has often been significant biases exhibited within these conversations."Points out that the 2 protocols have more in common than what divides t…
www.nature.com
"Bluesky posts about science garner more likes and reposts than similar ones on X... according to the first large-scale analysis of science content on Bluesky... suggest Bluesky users engage with posts more than do users of X... The results were posted as a preprint on arXiv last month and have not been peer reviewed.""Interactions on Bluesky wer…
bsky.social
Collection of posts from media publishers on the traffic and engagement from Bluesky compared to X, Threads, etc. Image: Similarweb's report, which also said:"Threads generated 24.5 million outgoing referrals in November, but 42% of that traffic was to sister site instagram.com. Bluesky generated 38.6 million outgoing visits, spread more evenly ac…
www.emarketer.com
When this was written there were 23m Bluesky users: "Some publishers report traffic and conversion rates three to four times higher compared with platforms like Threads and X, despite Bluesky’s smaller user base.... EUobserver received 3,800 unique visitors from Bluesky (with 3,300 followers) compared to 1,320 from X (with 203,000 followers)...Fo…
bsky.app
X is still larger but very regularly Bluesky easily eclipses it in terms of research being shared.
dl.acm.org
"decentralized approaches come with their own trade-offs, and therefore multiple architectures exist... we conduct the first large-scale analysis of Bluesky... [which] decomposes and opens the key functions of the platform into subcomponents that can be provided by third party stakeholders".The intros of Fediverse and Nostr provide a useful spectr…
dl.acm.org
A 2024 paper from the Bluesky team where they "introduce the architecture of Bluesky and the AT Protocol, and explain how the technical design of Bluesky is informed by our goals: enable decentralization by having multiple interoperable providers for every part of the system; make it easy for users to switch providers; give users agency over the c…
www.sciencedirect.com
This study examines:"the shift in the scientific community from X to Bluesky, its impact on scientific communication, and consequently on social metrics", following the Academic Twitter migration. Is there "evidence of a community shift", and if so "examine the differences in values and indicators..."? "provide valuable insights into whether Blue…
www.altmetric.com
Altmetric's blog post announcing that they had "expanded its tracking capabilities by integrating Bluesky" when there were "over 20 million users".
arxiv.org
This preprint "looks at the dynamics of this migration" from X to Mastodon of academics: using "publicly available user account data, we track the posting activity of academics on Mastodon over a one year period... gathered follower-followee relationships ... finding that the subset of academics ... were well-connected. However, this strong intern…
techcrunch.com
"Jack Dorsey ... invested $10 million ... fund experimental open source projects and other tools that could ultimately transform the social media landscape." Original focus nostr, but now "will experiment with other tools, too, like ActivityPub... as well as Cashu.""operating like a “community of hackers,”... could include new consumer social apps…
www.fabriziomusacchio.com
Some thoughts from a neuroscientist who's been kicking Bluesky's tyres: "The scientific community is once again shifting platforms... Between Mastodon’s ideals and Bluesky’s usability, we are faced with a complex landscape of compromises".Background: first he left X for Mastodon following Musk's purchase"over time, activity on Mastodon — at least …
www.project-syndicate.org
"Europe’s systemic dependency on Big Tech’s social-media platforms threatens the continent’s digital sovereignty" - perhaps nothing new, but well argued nevertheless:"Just as the European Union seeks to reduce its reliance on external providers for semiconductors... it must do the same for social media. dominant platforms extract value from Europe…